Hi I'm Kristen and today I'm going to explain why I no longer shop at Zara, or from any other brand that's part of the INDITEX corporation.
This is Amancio Ortega on September of 2016 he became the richest man in the world.
Owner of INDITEX, which includes Zara, and king of fast fashion, capitalism, and consumerism.
His fortune amounts to $79.5 billion dollars. He's the proud owner of a DB700 private jet, a 31.5 meter long yacht, and two mansions in Spain.
This man's fortune is absolutely massive and he created it by being pioneer of the fast fashion industry.
You know, the "3rd most polluting industry and one of the top three with the highest incidences of slave-like labor"
Ka-ching!
One more thing. My face has actually been printed and mass produced on a Zara T-Shirt, not once but twice.
So how on earth did I, the former Zara shopping addict sort-of poster child of the company, decide to start boycotting INDITEX completely since last year?
Let's rewind a little bit back to 2011 to find out why.
Greenpeace discovers 9 out of 10 jeans were poisonous and made with carcinogenic dye.
Zara vowed to go toxic-free.
And then once again, in the same year, slave-like conditions are discovered in Sao Paulo in an INDITEX contractor factory.
Workers had to work 16-19 hours and were in debt to their traffickers. INDITEX stated that it could not be held responsible for unauthorized outsourcing.
The Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) stated that: "It is Zara's responsibility...[quote above]"
So the CCC was basically like, "You signed a code of conduct which says that you are responsible for every single person in your production chain.
If you don't know who those people are, that's your responsibility."
But, you'll see that the whole lying thing is just a pattern that this company just regularly follows.
[Reads highlighted quote]
They were forced to pay a 410,000 euro fine- which is pretty much toothpick-money for Ortega.
And they also made this claim: [Reads highlighted quote]
Which is ironic because on April of the same year, one of the biggest disasters of the fashion industry happened in Bangladesh
with the Rana Plaza factory collapse.
Killing 1,129 people.
This factory was supplying clothes to some of the world's biggest fashion retailers.
But it didn't end there, because in 2014 the CCC uncovered that Zara
was once again buying sweatshop labor clothing from East Europe and Turkey
And again in 2016 it's discovered that Syrian refugees and children are working in sweatshops in Turkey
distressing Zara's jeans with toxic chemicals without a face mask for 12 hours a day
Zara's parent company, INDITEX, had already found significant non-compliance in June
and had given the factory until December to make improvements.
So back to what Zara said about their zero-tolerance approach- I'm kind of confused, does
zero-tolerance mean that you give the factory 6-7 months to work things out?
Or does zero-tolerance mean you end the contract immediately?
I'm kind of confused and it seems like Zara doesn't really know what zero-tolerance even means
in this case. So from the research that I did, i managed to discover about
6 incidents where Zara was either using a sweatshop,
labor, slave labor, child labor but that doesn't mean those are the only 6 incidents that happened.
That's only what I found or what they were caught doing.
And another thing that I'm not going to mention in this video is the environmental impact of fast fashion.
Which is massive! But it's just going to make this video a bit too long and I might make a specific video about that
and I wanted to focus exclusively on the people that INDITEX has harmed.
INDITEX is a company that, from our knowledge, for at least the last 5 years has been responsible
for the deaths and the exploitation of children, victims of trafficking, Syrian refugees and people living in poverty.
And at the head of this company, as a 60% shareholder is Amancio Ortega.
Just like when you pay someone to kill someone else on your behalf doesn't make you any less of a murderer,
when you pay someone else to use slaves, it doesn't make you any less of a slavemaster.
Amancio Ortega, as the owner of INDITEX is responsible for all crimes committed by the company,
making him the richest criminal in the world.
Now that you know the truth, you are in the same position as Ortega was back in 2011.
Do you continue down the same path of exploitation like he did, or do you make the brave
decision to change? And I know that having to change is a little bit stressful for some of us
so I took the liberty to make it a little bit easier and create a "ethical fashion initiation process"
for all of you out there that are interested in trying this so
I have made a playlist that is going to be available somewhere over here and I also have
a link for it in the description box and it's a few videos that I have made that are
going to inform you and give you tips and help you start shopping ethically.
And I also have a list of my favorite ethical fashion brands in the description box for anyone that is
ready to get started shopping ethically. I really hope you enjoyed watching this video.
I hope you liked it and make sure to comment below letting me know what you think.
But, most importantly, if you really want to help make sure to share this video and spread the message.
The world's most powerful and rich man with biggest fashion corporation on Earth
And it's not going to be taken down by a small YouTube channel like mine
but hopefully, with the help of you guys we can spread this video and make sure that as many
people as possible will get to see this and get to see what the real face of Zara is.
And it's an ugly one. 👹
So I really hope you share this video around and thank you so much for watching!
I'll see you guys next week. Bye! 😉